The purpose of this paper is to report some experimental results with HfSiO films formed on silicon substrates by electron beam evaporation (EB-PVD) and annealed at different temperatures. The images of atomic force microscope (AFM) indicated that HfSiO film annealed at 900 C was still amorphous, with a surface roughness of 0.173 nm. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis revealed that the chemical composition of the film was (HfO2)(3)(SiO2) and 14f-Si-O bonds existed in the annealed film. Electrical measurements showed that the equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) was 4 nm, the dielectric constant was around 6, the breakdown voltage was 10 MV/cm, the fixed charge density was -1.2 x 10(12) cm(-2), and the leakage current was 0.4 mu A/cm(2) at the gate bias of 2 V for 6 nm HfsiO film. The annealing after deposition effectively reduced trapping density and the leakage current, and eliminated hysteresis in the C-V curves. Annealing also induced SiO2 growth at the interface. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.